Deirdre Reilly: What’s to blame for our killer youth?

Thursday

Feb 28, 2008 at 12:01 AMFeb 28, 2008 at 6:58 PM

When I sent my middle son to college, I had the normal worries associated with a loved child’s departure from home – would he eat enough? Rest enough? Study enough? One thing I never asked myself, though – is he fast enough if he had to outrun a gunman? This, sadly, is what American parents now are facing when it comes to their college students attending schools all over the country.

Deirdre Reilly

When I sent my middle son to college, I had the normal worries associated with a loved child’s departure from home – would he eat enough? Rest enough? Study enough? One thing I never asked myself, though – is he fast enough if he had to outrun a gunman? This, sadly, is what American parents now are facing when it comes to their college students attending schools all over the country.
My son will be on his way home tomorrow – classes are cancelled at his school, which has received a threat of violence from a shadowy figure(s) police have not yet found, and maybe never will. Recently, a young, educated man opened fired at Northern Illinois University, killing five students where they sat, notebooks open, probably wondering what they were going to eat for lunch, or thinking about calling home. A student was shot in the parking lot at University of Arkansas-Little Rock this past Wednesday, and Framingham State in Massachusetts had a bomb threat this week, while Bridgewater State College’s president and student body were threatened with a multiple handwritten messages. Ferrum College in Virginia reported a gunman this month, and parents streamed to campus to try to retrieve their children.
Lockdown is becoming as familiar a phrase as meal plan or advanced degree, and parents can now have potential threats texted to their phones. Kids who were in middle school during the time of Columbine and 9/11 are now college-age and under fire – literally.
My son will be home tomorrow, leaving a mostly empty campus behind as worried students and parents make the decision that safe is better than brave, sometimes. The problem is, this could happen over and over again; we might be at the mercy of someone’s idea of a joke. Where is their power? In our very understandable fear.
The discussion on campus shootings is oddly reported – the details are given, in terms of deaths and circumstances, but there as of yet is not too much discussion on why this is happening – what is it that has gone wrong in society? To have an open discussion on this is threatening to some, because we don’t want freedoms taken away or questioned. But college violence once or twice is an aberration, while shootings this many times is a pattern, and should be fairly examined as a pressing issue of a complex society.
America is a place of free ideas and free speech. We can take you to the mountaintops, with soaring rhetoric and scenes of cinematic grandeur, and we can lead you to the valley, with movies, music and Internet ramblings so dark, so disturbing, that the off-centered and disturbed are among those who venture within. It is here that they can be fueled, supported, and energized in their strange ideas and careening isolation – instead of facing the light of a helpful and resourceful society, where hope lives. Our free speech, I believe – our right to put it all out there “creatively” and be protected, no matter how violent or disturbing - has helped to create a new species – the deadly young.
We are the most wonderfully free nation on earth, it is true. We have young people of amazing depth, creativity and character within our borders who are stretching their wings away at school, realizing just who they can be. Their achievements and contributions can and will change the world – for the better. If given the chance they will cure disease, help the global needy, and literally reach for the stars through scientific exploration and discovery. This cannot happen, however, if they become increasingly afraid on their way to class, or in a lecture hall, or in their dorm. We may instead see a future where college kids have an option to learn at home instead of on campus, if the emotional toll of increasingly common threats becomes too high.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste – and it’s terrible to scare it to death, too. We may have to consider restrictions on the truly vile and violent “artistic expression” as one important step against the violent young – if we want to protect society. You can’t legislate what is art or expression or communication in a free country, you may say. It’s not black and white, you will remind. Maybe not, but what is black and white are trains and cars being boarded hurriedly because kids are coming home afraid. And kids are dying. That is as black and white as a rational person needs.
I don’t have the answers. But I am looking forward to seeing my son’s face.
You can contact Deirdre at www.exhaustedrapunzel.com.